First Christmas Traditions: A Yearly Ornament
Meaning behind the ornaments
Our first Christmas together
Our first year out of the military
Our first house
Baby's First Christmas
A Yearly Ornament Creates Lifelong Memories
Someone go and bang the drum, spread the news a baby's come
It all started with those beautiful ornaments of when a baby joins a household...Our son was born in October of 2005 and we received several "baby's first Christmas" ornaments from friends and family. The only problem was the constant bickering of such a divided family of which one would go on the tree...with both of our parents being divorced this was a source of much contention until we decided not to hang any of them.
This became the perfect excuse to start our own family tradition of buying an ornament for each year of our family. At the time we had been married for a short 3 years and it wasn't too much work to remember large events in our lives worthy of being family legend.
So many memories are represented on our tree that it has become a monument to our lives together and the many years to come.Each ornament is silver or pewter and is engraved with the year on the back to help us remember those special moments of our lives and each year we are grateful to pull these reminders out of storage and display them with pride.
Other Ideas
Some other ideas include using porcelain, using other metals. or creating your own. One thing I do recommend is that you find a way to mark the year on the ornament and that you find a way to remind yourself what each of them stands for. Our family has a small flip book, kept with the Christmas box, that has a picture of each and its amazing story.
A Story of War
Shortly after we were married, 9/11 happened here in the states. My husband was living in North Carolina while I was in California. Two years later, when he finally got out of the military, we lived together for the first time. Shortly after that one of us was called to war and it wasn't him. During my absence he had many adventures to include taking an Amtrak train from California to Florida to see his family. On our tree is an ornament in the shape of a train for the occasion because when he arrived in Florida he received the news that he needed to come back to California to welcome his Bonnie Lass home from the war. Our family heard the tale in detail about his first train ride, needless to say he took a plane back.
